Mom Overboard!

That was the theme of the Babes & Tots speaker series I participated in this morning in Mississauga's Living Arts Centre. Moderated by the lovely Erica Ehm (that girl never ages, I swear, even though she was cursing her newly acquired glasses backstage), and it was great fun sharing the stage with Ann Douglas and Alyson Schafer, who never run out of fantastic parenting advice. We are all what you might call a little verbose - not exactly an introvert convention. Gave away some prizes, chatted with the audience, shared some stories...all good.

The seminars will continue this evening at 7:00, and then carry on every Tuesday for the month of September until we move the show to Ajax in October, and London in November. My next appearance will be October 7th at 10:00 a.m. in Ajax, so if you live in the area, try to come by. There's a consumer trade show component as well - check out their site.

The best part? (Besides hanging out with these wonderful women of course). I got to miss the first day of school and let my husband handle the Grade 1 tears while I spoke at the media breakfast this morning. The tears? No, they weren't about little Nic missing Mommy all day...it's knowing his days of having exclusive access to the television in the mornings while his 3 older siblings were at school, have come to an end. That, and the fact that "big boys" can't take their blankies to school- I've got it waiting by the front door right now. I'm trying not to miss him too much.

Just do the math...

I sometimes feel that having four children is a lot. In fact, when we're down to just two kids, (as we were this weekend) my husband and I often say "what do people with two kids do all day?" We're half kidding...as we are well aware that it's all relative. When you have four kids, two is easy. When you have two kids, one is easy. When you have none... ONE (especially the first one) is REALLY hard.

The relativity hit me this weekend as I found some quiet time (only two kids in residence, remember?) and watched the classic movie "Yours, Mine, and Ours" with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda. He had 10 kids, she had 8, and not only were they madcap enough to get married, she got pregnant (the logistics of finding time alone to begin with are truly boggling). Of course they all lived happily ever after - it was more a fantasy movie rather than a romantic comedy. Even their teenage son was pleasant.

Flash forward to me, yesterday, at Staples, pulling together school supplies for my kids (only four of them, not 19) it occurred to be while advising my nine year old that $12 is too much for a pencil case, that relatively speaking, I could handle this. Most of the time.

But if you live in the Toronto area, tune into Breakfast Television this Friday morning to see Alyson Schafer talking about "Mom Overboard", the theme of the Babes & Tots Show I'll be participating in on Tuesday, September 2nd in Mississauga. Yes, September 2nd...the first day my kids will be test driving those overpriced pencil cases.